


Running Red

by jmweasley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, M/M, R/S Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:18:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmweasley/pseuds/jmweasley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If one's life could be said to be a river, then Remus's would have run red.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running Red

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted for the excellent R/S Games at Livejournal, 2009, under the name moonypearl. TEAM CANON.
> 
> **Prompt:** Red, Life/Strength  
>  **Poem credit:** Pablo Neruda

 

 

_I want you to know  
one thing._

If one's life could be said to be a river, then Remus's would have run red.

 

_You know how this is:_  
 _if I look_  
 _at the crystal moon, at the red branch_  
 _of the slow autumn at my window,_  
 _if I touch_  
 _near the fire_  
 _the impalpable ash_  
 _of the wrinkled body of the log,_  
 _everything carries me to you,_

Red was the color of the last jumper Remus wore as a human boy. The wind drifted restlessly through the leaves outside, calling to him, singing his name gently through the open window. _Come away, come away O human child..._ Slipping silently through the dampered house the dim earth hungrily welcomed his small feet, gentled his path through the garden, out past the fence and into their small bit of the wild. The boy Remus laughed like only children still do-- at the sheer joy of being where and when you shouldn't and getting away with it. The same wind that had called his name ruffled his hair, pushed past the wool and denim and trailed fingers around his arms and knees and pulled, pulled him through the tall honey grass and into the waiting arms of the low tree limbs and the sharp darkness, contrasted so distinctly by the fat cold moon.

And then a piece of night broke off, rushed at him with eyes and teeth and blood already staining its jaws, and nothing would ever be the same.

 

_as if everything that exists:_  
 _aromas, light, metals,_  
 _were little boats that sail_  
 _toward those isles of yours that wait for me._

The seal looked like a splotch of blood against the cream parchment envelope. Not the blood he was used to though, sluggish and dark and confusing even when he couldn't _not_ know it was his, but where had it all come from? Not the color that he knew absolutely, even at ten, was the reason for the lines around his mother's eyes, the reason for the way his father would hold too tightly to his mug while the moon waxed. This was bright, glaring, demanding attention and elegantly embossed. With a shield he didn't recognize but could easily define as important by the way his parents were looking at him now, over a breakfast so recently ended. Like the paper in his hand was whispering secrets to them, spilling them out against the tea cups and toast crumbs and Remus didn't know the language yet. No piece of paper in his whole life had caused this feeling of waiting and expectation and _hope_ and he hadn't even cracked the scarlet circle yet.

And then he did and he knew this color of red would come to mean just everything.

 

_Well now,_  
 _if little by little you stop loving me_  
 _I shall stop loving you little by little._

He was awash, literally, in a sea of red. Rosettes, robes, scarves, hats, gloves, everything was red and gold and a maelstrom of pride and joy. Peter bounced next to him, having the decency to look and act as excited as Remus felt but could never, not really ever, show. The crowd, almost a mob, danced and jumped and laughed and yelled as one as James finally landed on the pitch, golden flapping Snitch raised triumphantly in the air, hair as wild as it had ever been and a grin splitting his face in near two. Sirius was a moment behind, landing in a heap gracelessly only to jump up and tackle James to the ground with a laugh Remus imagined he could hear, even now, over the tumult.

And when Peter pulled his robes, shouting something about celebrating and Moony and house cups and _let's go_ , Remus let go of the grip he had on himself just a little, laughed with the rest of them and ran to meet his friends.

 

_If suddenly_  
 _you forget me_  
 _do not look for me,_  
 _for I shall already have forgotten you._

There was a sharp red line that split Sirius's lip, surrounded by a irritated pink that would turn bruise in a day or so, a blemish that was new. A blemish that wasn't there yesterday when he left them for the Shack. That wasn't there when Sirius had waved him goodbye, breaking through his brooding long enough to tell him he'd see him later and chin up Moony old man. A red that matched the knuckles of James's hand, clenched tightly as the three of them sat too far away from Remus in the infirmary wing and threw words around and at him he didn't understand, and oh, it clicked for Remus then. A small piece of the puzzle his brain wouldn't, couldn't, accept as needed solving because then it would be true, it would be _true_ , but logic will always win and it must have been from James. The cut on Sirius' s lip must have been from James. James, who never hit anyone except Snape and even Remus when pressed would admit he deserved it most of the time. Snape. Snape who saw, Snape who _knew_ , Snape who knew because of Sirius. Sirius of the split lip, looking everywhere by at Remus or Peter or James, James of the split knuckles.

And when that small piece dragged the rest of the chaos into a clear picture, Remus covered his face with his hands and saw the red again.

 

_If you think it long and mad,_  
 _the wind of banners_  
 _that passes through my life,_  
 _and you decide_  
 _to leave me at the shore_  
 _of the heart where I have roots,_

Sirius's mouth was red again, but not split, not divided, rather wet looking actually and god, had he always bitten it like that when he shot Remus looks over silly things like library books and treacle tart? Who had the decency to have lips that scarlet and inviting and malleable over inane everyday objects, perverting their purpose and Remus's attention and his fucking sanity? Impossibly chafed and swollen and looking like he'd been sucking on goddamn strawberries as those lips grew in Remus's mind until the were the only thing he could see, driving him into embarrassingly catatonic bouts of staring over what could have been an innocent game of chess with Sirius that night. Sirius, who was now smirking at him like he knew exactly what Remus was thinking and damn well _liked it_.

And then Remus threw everything he had to the wind, surged in his seat, and reminded Sirius how his lips got that way in the first place, and really that was a bit of alright.

 

_remember_  
 _that on that day,_  
 _at that hour,_  
 _I shall lift my arms_  
 _and my roots will set off_  
 _to seek another land._

Lily's hair shone in the sun, no longer red but shades and twists of gold and russet, gleaming and swinging around her as James dipped her low, proudly and with all his newly inherited rights, on the dance floor. A song Remus could never properly remember but would still hum years later under his breath in unguarded moments pooled around his ears, incorporating the low hum of people enjoying themselves and of low anxious whispers cut off abruptly when the whisperers remembered when and where they were. Lily's hair was nothing like the red that was in the icing of the small wobbly cake perched precariously by Peter's elbow, that was in the roses dotting the small tables and crumpled lapels, that was in the curve of Dumbledore's cheeks as he murmured something low to Moody. Nothing could ever match the color of Lily's hair as she and James orbited in their bubble for all the world to observe and cherish.

And then a hand rested on his shoulder, a low voice asked him, dared him, _Want to show them how it's really done then, Moony?_ and red was his new favorite color.

 

_But_  
 _if each day,_  
 _each hour,_  
 _you feel that you are destined for me_  
 _with placable sweetness,_  
 _if each day a flower_  
 _climbs up to your lips to seek me_

 

The sky was burning. It was twenty three days later and Remus could imagine the sky was still ablaze from the rubble at Godric's Hollow. Even though he knew, really he did, that there had been no blaze, no long arms of flame and smoke and ash reaching up to an uncaring sky, signaling the end of everything and scarring the night and a small boy's skin. No blaze but the one inside Remus, raging and scorching and hungry all the time, aching to burn it all, just let it burn. No fire but the one burning in Sirius's eyes twenty four days ago, no flames but the ones dancing on the stubs of the candles dotted around the shitty hut Remus had hidden himself away in, unfamiliar and still not far enough away from everything he knew. The only ashes were the ones Remus tasted every time he swallowed.

And then the last of the light faded from the tops of the trees and the moon came to remind him of a different kind of burning.

 

_ah my love, ah my own,_  
 _in me all that fire is repeated,_  
 _in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,_

Tattered edges of thought and dreams and hope wrapped themselves around Remus, softening the blow, shutting out all sounds and stilling the world for a moment. Just that one moment, a pregnant pause where Sirius's bloodshot eyes, too large in his shrunken skin, snapped to his own and the world was realigned. He'd found his center. He'd found his center in a room caked with his old blood and dust, in a room with a traitor and three still-children, in a room lanced by the wind that breathed through the floorboards. In a room where his professor mask cracked and all the ghosts of himself flung themselves at him, bombarded his sense of self and identity and he at that moment did not know who he was.

And then suddenly none mattered as he reached out a hand and held onto what was his.

 

_my love feeds on your love, beloved,  
and as long as you live it will be in your arms  
without leaving mine._


End file.
